How to add chapters to YouTube video
Hello! My name is Vitalii — I am an independent developer and the creator of AI Chapters Generator. In this article, you will learn why I created this tool and how it can improve your YouTube experience — whether you are a content creator or just a viewer.
Why I created this?
As an experienced YouTube user, I often get frustrated when long videos don’t have timestamps with chapter descriptions. They are extremely helpful when watching educational videos and allow you to quickly jump to the chapters you need at the moment.
For some reason, most channel creators don’t add them, and you can often see comments under videos like: “Where are the timestamps?”, “We need chapters!”, and so on.
But besides convenience for viewers, chapters are also a valuable SEO signal that helps YouTube and Google rank your video as high as possible.
Videos with chapters are at the top — everything below is without chapters
What problem does it solve?
At the intersection of these two problems, I created AI Chapter Generator — software that helps channel creators generate chapters with timestamps for their videos, even if YouTube hasn’t generated subtitles yet.
Also, as a regular viewer, I often use this tool myself and post the generated timestamps in the comments to quickly find the information I need in a video.
How it works
Step-by-step guide on how to create chapters using the service:
- Copy the video link
- Paste it into the field on the website
- Select the level of chapter detail for the video:
- 🌊 Basic — only the main sections.
- ⚖️ Medium — only the main topics.
- 🔍 Detailed — all noticeable changes in topics and subtopics.
4. Click the Generate Chapters button.
If the video already has subtitles, the service will quickly analyze them (depending on the video length) and generate chapters with timestamps.
If the video does not have subtitles, it is first sent for AI-powered transcription.
1 — Choose SRT or VTT format
2 — Click the download icon
In this case, the entire process may take more time, but the creator also gets extra value in the form of a video transcript — it can be downloaded in SRT format and added to the video as subtitles.
For channel creators
After the list of chapters is ready, the creator can copy the result along with the timestamps and paste it into the video description.
Then click the save button, and within a few minutes the chapters with timestamps should appear for all viewers of the channel.
Adding such timestamps provides several benefits for the video and the channel as a whole.
For viewers
Here I describe my personal experience: when I watch educational content, I often use my service and post chapters with timestamps in the comments under the video to quickly find the needed information. This is useful both for other viewers and for the channel creator.
Why are timestamps under a video important?
- The first and most obvious reason — viewers can easily find the information they need in your videos.
- As a result, engagement and watch depth increase.
- Higher engagement and return visits — viewers find it easy to search for information on your channel.
- Videos with chapters appear more often in Google search results as “Video Snippets” / “Featured Clips”, meaning a link to a specific moment matching the user’s query is shown.
It may seem that if users can quickly find the information they need, they will watch only that part and leave. But statistics show the opposite:
Chapters help reduce bounce rate and increase average watch time (or completion rate), especially for channels that produce educational content.
Why chapters don’t always appear
Sometimes chapters may not appear under a video even if timestamps are added to the description. I found several reasons for this:
- Not enough subscribers on the channel — more than 1,000 are required.
- Fewer than 3 chapters added.
- A chapter is shorter than 10 seconds.
- Some users found that adding external website links and URLs can interfere with proper chapter functionality.
The second and third points are already handled in the development of the AI YouTube chapter generator. The rest depends on you 🙂
Advantages and comparison with other tools
What’s inside
Under the hood, there is an AI agent trained on thousands of different videos. It can generate relevant timestamps with SEO-optimized descriptions to help promote your videos.
At the moment, the service generates chapters for any video except live streams. It can generate timestamps for both short and long videos. The longer the video, the more time chapter generation may take.
Planned features:
- Bulk chapter generation for all videos on a selected channel
- Automatic posting of chapters into video descriptions without access to your YouTube account
- Tracking new videos on a channel and automatic generation of chapters with timestamps